Do you agree that nurses have less privileged position among health care professionals? Justify your arguments with illustrations.
Nurses are responsible for the majority of patient care and hence they perform some of the most important duties in the patient’s stay in the hospital from monitoring vital signs into administering needed medications. Nursing, whom King (1981) defined as a helping profession that assists individuals and groups in society to attain, maintain and restore health, is the central tenet of health promotion. Nurses as human beings interact with their supervisors as human beings and both are open systems that also interact with the environment (Meleis, 2007, p. 330).
Basically, the goal of nursing is the “attainment, maintenance or restoration of health to allow clients to achieve maximum potential for daily living.” Naturally, the same goal goes with the clinical practitioners including the nurses. Interactions are fundamental in the clinical context; individuals are purposeful and goal-directed particularly for the nurses who have direct interface with the patients. Nonetheless, the individuals who are involved in interaction bring various perceptions to the exchange. Plausibly, there must be a basic understanding that perception occurs differently in the nurse and in the supervisors aside from the clients.
As Boyd (2005) puts it, the theory is a systems model which derived its conceptual framework from three dynamic interacting systems: persona, interpersonal and social. Individual system embraces the concept of perception, self, growth and development, time and space. Perception is considered to be the most important within the personal system because of its influence on behavior (1981, p. 19). Individuals or group(s) reacting to one another made up the interpersonal systems, and comes in three: as a dyad, a triad or a larger group. Kozier et al (1995) relate that concepts associated with such system include interaction, transaction, communication, role and stress. Social systems, finally, comprise of groups of people in a community or society that share common goals, interests and values (Williams, 2001) and are linked with the concepts of organization, authority, power, status and decision-making.
Supervisors hold a specific power of influence among the nurses. Such condition basically manifests the varying perception of supervisors and nurses. As a supervisor, they have more authority and influence to the health care system. As such, the relationship that exists between supervisors and nurses is multi-paradigmatic in nature. Two among these paradigms that support the power inserted by the supervisor over a professional yet mentoring relationship is evident on systems. The former is central on structural-functional view of role, open systems and social systems while the latter focuses on the self who is either the supervisor or the nurse. This also points out that an individual as a social element is both an actor and a reactor.
Aside from the client’s personal information, the professional intimacy between a nurse and a patient is realized through the psychological and social elements associated with the encounter. In the outpatient clinical setting, it is unavoidable that a nurse will have to rely on his/her supervisor for professional counseling needs. This is yet another goal of the nurses which is to involve in a relationship without sacrificing the professionalism of the job.
Realizing a lot about the nurse-patient relationship which is basically founded on specific boundaries and that crossing such boundary may impose serious consequences. The purpose of the relationship is goal-oriented; simply to provide care to client, that is. Of course, the emphasis is on the role of the nurses. The nurses are responsible for establishing and sustaining the professional relationship and so his/her behavior is guided by code of ethics and professional standards. These nurses also have the responsibility to prepare for the relationship via acquiring formal knowledge, orientation and training.
References
Boyd, M. A. (2005). Psychiatric nursing: Contemporary Practice (3rd ed). Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
King, I. M. (1981). A theory for nursing: Systems, concepts, process. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Kozier, B., Erb, G., Blais, K. and Wilkinson, J. M. (1995). Fundamentals of nursing: concepts, process, and practice (5th ed). Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
Meleis, A. F. (2007). Theoretical Nursing: Development and Progress. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
Williams, L. A. (2001). Imogene King’s interacting systems theory – Application in emergency and rural nursing. Online journal of rural nursing and health care, 2(1).
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